Images Fail to Import

[Luther Frank]

Hi all,

I'm running VW2019 SP3.

Suddenly I am unable to import any images. I always receive the same error "Unable to create a graphics importer for the file. The system may not have an importer installed or memory may be low"

I have tried both PNG and JPEG files, as large as a gig and as small as a 100kb. Pulling images from the internet seems to work, as they come in as bitmaps being compressed, but no file can be imported directly from my machine.

I have restarted VW as well as my computer. I can confirm vectorworks is only using half a gig of memory, and I have a full 8gb unused.

Any thoughts for fixing this issue?

Thank you.

[jblock]

Hi Luther,

 

This usually means there is a problem with the location of the images, or there are some updates that are missing on the computer. If you are on Windows, can you make sure all Windows updates have been installed? Also, can you try making a new folder on your Desktop and importing and image from there?

 

Thanks,

[Art V]

In addition to what @jblock said above,  in case it is not a Windows issue or location issue, you may have been trying to import an image file with a different encoding than VW supports (this can happen with file formats that have multiple types of encoding, e.g. geoTIFF vs regular TIFF). I've also noticed that with very large images it helps to split them up in tiles of 400-500 MB max and then saves as JPG (which reduces the file size with a factor of approx. 10) and then import those JPG files.

Edited April 18, 2019 by Art V

[Luther Frank]

1 hour ago, jblock said:

Hi Luther,

 

This usually means there is a problem with the location of the images, or there are some updates that are missing on the computer. If you are on Windows, can you make sure all Windows updates have been installed? Also, can you try making a new folder on your Desktop and importing and image from there?

 

Thanks,

So I updated windows, this did not fix the issue.

Making a new folder did work. Now this is confusing. I even opened old documents with images already embedded. I tried to import the same images already in the drawing from the same location that used to work (the same folder as the drawing), and it returns the same error. Importing these images from the desktop works.

I'm glad for the fix, truly, but doesn't this seem like a bigger problem? I can't move the thousands of images from my storage drive to new folders. Is there some way to restore this functionality for my old folders?

Thanks for the help everyone.

[Art V]

You could try opening task manager and look what happens with memory usage when you import an image.

Did it work fine for a while since you updated to SP3 or did this start to happen after updating to SP3? If the latter then it might be a bug in SP3.

[PhoebeBean]

I have been having this problem for a while having to change the way I import images to get them in until today when I could do nothing, not import, not drag, not cut and paste, not bitmap as suggested above, nor changing "location of image".  

 

So I converted the file to a .pdf and imported fine no problem. 

 

I have Vectorworks 2023 and a MacBook Pro running off Ventura 13.4.1 .  

 

While I have solved this problem for now any advice would be gratefully received!